The big bad lep is back! Yes, for reasons apparent to absolutely no one, everyone's favorite leprechaun (Warwick Davis) has returned to put a hurtin' on anyone who takes his gold, or anyone who has gold.....or pretty much anyone who pisses him off. The twist here, to differentiate this movie from previous regular "numbered" entries in the increasingly mind numbing series, is that the leprechaun is in the hood g! Ice-T also stars in this movie so it should be obvious that your mind will be blown upon seeing this movie, and I haven't even mentioned the dancing leprechaun zombie girls yet!
This is seriously an oddball movie that plays to a weird demographic that enjoys bad horror/comedies. The original Leprechaun film had a poster and an advertising campaign that made it seem like a cross between the Nightmare on Elm Street series and those awful Chucky movies, and since then it has continued to be something like that, except usually on a direct to video basis. Just think, Warwick Davis went from that cutesy hero in that Willow movie to this, and don’t even get me started on the Warwick Davis fan club! Recently, Warwick tackled an even more ignominious role as Marvin the Robot in The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The only problem was that the robot was voiced by Alan Rickman, leaving Mr. Davis’ role in the film as that of someone walking around in a costume, and not being shown onscreen or talking.
Schlock horror films never have a deep plot worth discussing, but lets dive into it anyway. We open with Ice-T and a henchman inexplicably searching for treasure in the sewers when lo and behold they find what appears to be a statue of a leprechaun holding a flute and wearing a gold chain. When the chain comes off, the leprechaun returns to life again. Obviously, as soon as this happens the henchman is quickly dispatched, and after a minor struggle, the chain somehow falls back on the leprechaun’s neck meaning Ice-T has possession of his flute, which is “magical”. Henceforth it shall be referred to as the magic flute or just the flute. Fast-forward to sometime in the future and Ice-T is kind of a pimp/mogul around town thanks to his magic flute. Some streetwise rapper kids get wind of this and try to steal the flute out of his house, which is somehow left unguarded at night, naturally one of them gets the bright idea to also take the leprechaun’s chain and the leprechaun is released again. Pretty soon, every scene is a chase scene as the kids are running from the leprechaun and Ice-T, both of whom are trying to regain possession of the flute. Some pretty hokey death scenes and bad rhyming from the leprechaun follow, as well as the introduction of the dancing leprechaun zombie girls who seem to be something like Dracula’s girls. Then naturally the film climaxes with the leprechaun rapping at a club as the credits roll.
The reason that I don’t understand this type of movie is that it completely falls outside of the normal formula for a movie – normal being where you actually care about the characters and what happens to them. The street kids are so bland and nondescript that I was just wondering which one of them was going to get it first. Any one of them could have fallen victim to the dreaded “black guy dying first in a horror movie” bit in any other feature. Ice-T was just a well-dressed thug in this movie who had no class or much savvy. And you know what they say; you just can’t keep a bad leprechaun down.
